The Thun Altarpiece

The head of the workshop, who received this commission, was a remarkable painter known as the Master of the St George Altarpiece (Altarpiece with the Death of the Virgin, called of St George, Prague, ca. 1470). Decisive for his style was his indirect familiarity with Netherlandish art of the post-Eyck era. It is customary to see as his chief source of inspiration Nuremberg painting of the 1440s and 1450s. In terms of painterly execution, the Thun triptych is of lower quality than the paintings of the St George Altarpiece, even though it maintains the main characteristics typical of the workshop (the colour composition, the techniques used for decorating the background and the gilded frames, as well as a certain „horror vacui“). However, in comparison with the St George Altarpiece, the Thun Triptych signals a shift in the construction of pictorial space, as the Marian scenes are set either in interiors or in the open landscape, rather than against a golden background. The workshop of the Master of the St George Altarpiece amply used graphic models by Master E.S., even though it is clear that the artists only borrowed some of the motifs, creatively reworking the rest. In this respect, it is interesting to study the underdrawing because in many cases, the drawn design is closer to the purported source of inspiration than the final painting.